


devotion in our wake

by inconocible



Series: swimming in sevens, slow dancing in seconds [6]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: A lot of porn with a lot of feelings byE, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Ghost Sex, Grief/Mourning, How far post-episode? idk you tell me Dave Filoni, Masturbation, Oral Sex, PWP, Porn with Feelings, Post-episode s04e13 A World Between Worlds, Set sometime post-series, So no spoilers from the finale, Spoilers for all of Season 4, Technically AU of the finale, Tender and sweet feeling-filled sex, This was written before the season 4 finale, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 19:34:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13841544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconocible/pseuds/inconocible
Summary: She’s thinking about Ezra, what he’s been trying to tell her a lot these past few weeks, something Kanan himself had told her, once, so many years ago: That no one’s ever really gone; that there is no death, there is the Force.None of it makes sense.“Where are you?” she asks.





	devotion in our wake

**Author's Note:**

> __  
> come on and  
>  be here in this moment  
> sacred, i'm [saying your name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZKBqRxuIdw)  
> 

Hera tosses and turns in her bunk, futilely sniffing back tears, facing down the impassable wall of grief and frustration in her mind that has become too familiar over the recent weeks.

Lothal was freed, and Scarif was destroyed, and they’re back, back with the rebellion, back on the _Ghost_ , but she can’t find her balance, can’t get her equilibrium right, can never quite hold herself steady by the end of the day. She’s found herself crying and stewing in guilt and self-hatred nearly every night for almost three weeks now, banging her emotional head against this wall of grief and of frustration, never able to break through it.

Some nights, Ezra, who has become calmer and more self-assured and more attentive, as responsible and as loving and as charismatic as Kanan – some nights he comes to her, seeks her out: pets her back, holds her hands, lets her cry. Her strong, sweet, grown kid, trying so hard to take care of her.

But some nights, Ezra just can’t manage it, ends up tucking his face into the crook of her neck and crying, too, telling her, “I miss him, too, Hera, I miss him so much,” and the guilt that hits her in those moments is almost too much to bear at all, a hazardous feedback loop thrumming between them.

Tonight – tonight is a night Hera doesn’t want, or need, Ezra’s careful attention, knows that she’d just make it worse for him, that he’d just make it worse for her.

Tonight she’d started crying before she could even get to her room, crying out of rage at herself for expecting, in an unguarded moment, Kanan to come strolling into the cockpit with a hot mug of tea, having sensed her frustration and anxiety. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, he never would. Stupid.

Stupid, she had said to herself, she’s so stupid, and she’d started crying then, before she could even get out of her chair, before she could even take off her boots and her cap, before she could even process what was happening. Tears blinding her, she had stumbled abruptly to her bunk, stripping her clothing, pressing into bed, sobbing.

She is snuggled deep into her blankets now, wearing nothing but an old t-shirt that Kanan used to haul out to do chores in, tattered around the hem but soft and familiar on her skin. Her arms are wrapped around her own middle so tightly it hurts, her ribs aching between her heaving lungs and her clutching hands.

Hera bites her lip, trying to calm down, but she can’t, she can’t. She’s so kriffing weak, she thinks to herself. So weak. How did she get like this? Where’s her protective, cold cloak, the one her father taught her by example how to weave?

Maybe it’s back in the cockpit, but it’s sure as hell not in this room, this room smothered by the low light and the gaping chasm of Kanan’s absence. It’s been weeks, _weeks_ since he’s slept in this bed, but she swears if she can press deeply enough into it, she can still smell him there.

It’s not enough, though. It never will be.

It’s not what she needs.

Kanan, Kanan is what she needs, and damn, she _needs_ , weeks of grief and frustration stiffening the tips of her lekku, her whole body sickeningly tense in its despair.

“Kanan,” she whispers, broken, and just his name on her lips sends her tumbling into a fresh wave of grief. “I can’t do this,” she says, sucking in wet, messy sobbing breaths. “I can’t, I can’t do this, _Kanan_.”

Hera turns her head into her pillow and she _howls_ , hoping to all the small goddesses she isn’t going to wake Ezra up. She’s thinking about Ezra, what he’s been trying to tell her a lot these past few weeks, something Kanan himself had told her, once, so many years ago: That no one’s ever really gone; that there is no death, there is the Force.

None of it makes sense.

“Where _are_ you?” she asks.

Hera sobs and shakes, pressing her body into the mattress and the pillow until the worst of it has passed. She flops over onto her back, sniffling, breathing hard, staring up at the ceiling of the _Ghost_.

“Please,” she whispers to the ceiling. She closes her eyes, and his eyes flash in her field of vision, the image of them seared into her mind forever, clear and bright in that split-second just before –

“Please,” Hera says again, praying, _begging_ , wishing to all hells that she could just touch the Force, the way Ezra can. That she could find some kind of peace there, some kind of equilibrium.

“Kanan, please,” she croaks, her voice breaking, rolling onto her side, curling in. “ _Please._ ” She doesn’t even know what she’s asking for, she just, she can’t, she can’t do this, she needs him, she _needs_ , she _wants_ –

She swears she feels the phantom of a touch on her shoulder and she gasps, jerking violently away before reconsidering, reaching a cautious hand up, seeking out the feeling. She’s felt this unnatural sensation before, felt it at least twice on Lothal – this preternatural feeling that, beyond all odds, Kanan’s there, right behind her like always, like he always should be, his hand on her shoulder, steady and warm and strengthening and everything he always promised, always was.

Hera folds in on herself, her chin sharp against her wrist as she holds her shoulder, presses the unreal feeling into her body with her own clutching fingertips.

“Please,” she gasps, shaking. The phantom touch moves, suddenly, lingering briefly on the back of her exposed neck before brushing her face, mingling in her tears.

Hera closes her eyes, takes a shuddering breath.

“Steady,” Kanan always used to tell her, when she’d get too excited, quivering with anger or arousal or some strange, volatile combination of both. “Steady, love,” he’d say, running his fingers over her cheeks or her jaw or her lekku. Sometimes, he didn’t have to say anything, would just –

Put his hand on her shoulder.

Steady.

Hera sighs, trying to remember his calming touch, his soothing voice, trying to relax, to focus on the sensation on her face. “Where are you,” she whispers, thinking of his touch, of his voice. She swears she feels that phantom touch on her skin, on her face, skimming her cheekbones, her jawline, the cones of her ears, the base of her lekku, back down the back of her neck.

She chases it, skating her own fingers along in the path of the sensation, a cold trail of goosebumps following in her wake.

“ _Please,_ ” she says again, a moan, almost. It’s been weeks since she’s been touched intimately, the last time a quiet, desperate affair in back of a storage unit in Ryder’s camp back on Lothal, while Ezra and Sabine were out stealing the Tie Defender data, on their way to change everything. It was a quickie that had felt like anything but, that had been charged with more electricity and longing than sex had been in the longest time for them:

“Shh, steady,” he’d whispered, running confident, soothing palms over her bare skin, cupping her skull in his hands, protective. “Steady, love, I’ve got you,” he had said, and he had ducked his head between her thighs.

She feels her nipples and the tips of her lekku all stiffening at this, at the arousing, painful memory of Kanan’s careful devotion back on Lothal, his urgent sweetness, his heavy sadness. It was almost like he had known, like he’d expected:

“I’ve got you, love,” he had insisted, worshipping her with his mouth. “Let go.” His beard had rasped against her skin, his tongue broad and flat and patient, so good and so _there,_ on her, on her jil, on her slit, inside her folds. He hadn’t let up, not until she’d come three times, shaking and biting down on the heel of her hand to keep from crying out, and then he’d risen to his knees, feeling his way up her body, kissing her thoughtfully, tenderly, the taste of her own cunt bright and sharp in his mouth.

Hera is breathing heavily, and the phantom touch is on her torso, now. She doesn’t know what the hell is going on, wonders if she’s losing her mind, but she follows the touch anyway, knows she’d follow it anywhere. Lets herself believe that maybe, just maybe, it’s him. Maybe it’s him, brushing her breasts, squeezing her waist. She trails after it, her hands questing under the hem of her shirt, one rolling a nipple between her fingers, the other skimming her stomach, remembering:

“I love you, Hera,” he had said, serious, low, pulling her onto his lap, wrapping her legs around his waist, pressing into her slowly, gently.

“Love you too,” she had moaned, so far gone on him. They were having sex on the floor of a prefab storage unit in the middle of Ryder’s camp, and she didn’t _kriffing care_ , and he had pressed his forehead into hers, drawing her into him.

“I’ll never leave,” he had said, fucking up into her, his voice breaking, holding her close against his chest, his broad hands spanning her back. “I’ll never leave you. I promise.”

“Kanan,” she had said, upset at his strange tone, the melancholy kisses he pressed to her throat, but he had been insistent, one hand moving to the back of her neck, staring straight up at her with his milky, ruined eyes, serious, awe on his face, almost as though he could –

“Hera,” he had said, urgent, pressing into her, her next orgasm threatening from the angle of his thrusts, the muscles in her abdomen burningly tight. “Love you so much, need you to understand –“ and his thrusts had become deeper, harder, losing their rhythm, and her hand had snaked down to stroke her jil, and she had wanted so badly to come with him, _with him_ ,

“With me, love,” she had said, her other hand gripping his hair like a lifeline,

“Always,” he had promised, quivering under her, “I’ll always be with you, _Hera,_ ” and she had come, clenching around him, gasping, tears falling from the corners of her eyes, pulled by the force of his sweetness,

And he had come, then, too, turning his face into her neck with sobbing breaths, “Love you, love you,” and:

And he had known, she thinks, now.

Somehow, he had known.

Why else would he have –

Hera’s hand moves to her neck, chasing the touch, the memory, the way his still-damp beard had prickled against her throat. Her throat is tight, now, tears threatening to spill again.

Nothing in Hera’s existence has felt so physically _good_ since that moment weeks ago, since that moment when, still inside her, Kanan had cupped her sweaty face in his hands, kissing every inch of it with his swollen lips, whispering to her, “I’ll always be with you,” and Hera bites back a sob, runs her fingertips over her own lips, now, feeling the ghost of the touch there on her neck, as real as it was then, kriffing chills running down her spine.

Stars, he had _known_.

Hera begins to cry again, unable to hold it back, but her body is on fire, thinking of these things, and she runs both her hands down her ribs.

“Please,” she moans, running her hands over her hips, down her upper thighs and back up, her skin prickling and burning with need, for the first time since the floor of that storage unit on Lothal. “Need you, _Kanan –“_

She’s wet, she’d known even before she feels it, but the sensation of it, of her wetness leaking and spreading over and through her folds, jolts through her suddenly, her whole body hitching in a gasping, sobbing breath as she feels that phantom touch there, in her folds, in the slickness of her slit.

“Love,” she gasps, breathing hard.

She can almost imagine him, can almost feel him, over her and smiling that fond, sweet smile, and her left hand is at the base of her lek, massaging, caressing, and her right hand is at her navel, sliding down, down, over her too-sharp hipbone, her fingers on her jil both a relief and a shock, all in the same touch.

“Kriff,” she breathes. It’s been so long and it feels so good, and she can’t get him out of her head, and she doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to lose whatever this unnatural sensation is, this heavy idea of him that covers her, feels like the weight and shape of him, like the perfect curve of his mouth, like the electric blue-green of his eyes, like the tenderness of his hands.

She’s so wet, stars, so kriffing wet for him. “Kanan,” she whimpers, squeezing her eyes closed, rolling her hips, her fingertips moving on her jil in aroused, practiced strokes, groaning at the movement, “please, oh, love, please.”

She swears she feels his touch in her folds, and she thinks about him, about the early days, before the kids, when they’d take two days off and spend them entirely in bed at least once a month. When he’d lay there, patient between her thighs, wringing orgasms from her for what felt like hours. He used to be able to make her come just with a whisper of his lips on her slit: “Let go, love.” He used to –

He used to get her to, she gasps, _feeling it_ , to touch herself while he ate her out, his tongue inside her and over her folds, and her own fingers so slick on her jil, the perfect team, flying her body high, and she swears, she _swears_ , that’s what’s happening right now, something otherworldly making her slit tingle as she fingers herself, faster now.

“Oh, kriff,” she gasps, and she’s crying, she’s sobbing, she’s trembling, because he had said he would always be with her, even though he had _known_ , but somehow, somehow he’s still here, and the delicate muscles in the arch of her right foot are starting to tense up, to pulse along with the muscles in her abdomen as she rocks into her own hand, into this unbelievable touch, into him.

He had said he would see her again, and somehow, he’d managed to keep that promise, too.

“With me,” she gasps, and she doesn’t know if it’s a question or a declaration or a request, her left hand stroking her lek from root to tip, in time with the fingers of her right hand sliding demandingly over her jil, fast and slick circles, the tight bundle of nerves screaming with the need to release. “With me,” she gasps, “please,” and she’s coming, spilling hot and messy over the edge, moaning long and deep, in the back of her throat, her lekku tense and tight under her hand.

“Kanan,” she groans, because that phantom touch hasn’t let up, and she shivers, her body convulsing. She knows his pattern, can’t possibly doubt now that this isn’t, somehow, his essence at work on her body, because it doesn’t let up, it intensifies, the inner walls of her cunt fluttering almost painfully, nothing there for them to grasp.

Her breaths become high pitched wails, ah, ah, ah, ah, and she stays with him, her body bending and releasing rhythmically on the bed, doesn’t let up on her jil, feels the second orgasm crashing over her, a wave breaking on the rocks, an explosion on the back of her eyelids.

She can _hear_ him, can actually kriffing hear him, as clearly as she could that day back on Lothal, his lips on her ear, as her body seizes and trembles, riding it out. _Love you, I love you, Hera._

“Love you,” she moans, panting, sweating, tears tracking down her cheeks. She feels the touch on her face again, soft, gentle, tracing the tear tracks, and she withdraws her right hand from her wetness with a final gasp, winding her shaking fingers in the hem of his shirt.

Breathing heavily, Hera curls onto her side, the way he had said _always, I’ll always be with you,_ reverberating in her chest, warming her from the inside. _I’ve got you._

“I know, love,” she whispers, even as the preternatural touch skates over her neck and her back, even as she comes down from the moment, _I’ve got you_ ringing through her bones.

 _Steady_ swimming through her bloodstream.

Hera sighs, and slides contentedly into sleep for the first time in weeks, something heavy wrapped impossibly around her back, dragging her under.

**Author's Note:**

> "give me tonight" - dustin tebbut - on repeat  
> (part of my [space dad appreciation playlist](https://inconocible.tumblr.com/post/171391651662/kanan-jarrus-defense-squad-2k18-a-playlist-by))
> 
> all my love to [brahe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brahe/pseuds/brahe) for letting me scream at them about this  
> i love to scream with my mutuals about how much this tv show hurts me? find me on [tumblr](https://inconocible.tumblr.com/)


End file.
